Mountain biking race (Mtn bike Orienteering) 1:53:00 [3] 13.47 km (7.2 kph)
Coach ld twisted my arm and made me drive 4 hours up the 401 and into the dreaded GTA sprawl so I could ride my mountain bike around and around in circles. Well, not really. I was eyeing the STARS orienteering club mountain bike O for a while, but 4 hours for a 2 hour event is generally outside my usual travel time:race time ratio. But.....since I had to be in London for Monday morning anyway (half way between home and the site of the event) and I wanted to take my mom out for her birthday, in the London area, and since I had never tried mountain bike orienteering.....I went.
The Albion Hills conservation area was a terrific place to have this event. The trail map looked like a plate of spaghetti. Everything from wide two track to narrow sqiggly one way single track. And everything was covered in freshly fallen yellow leaves, so even the non trail areas kind of looked like trails in places. I mapped out my intended route to the first 3 or 4 controls, and put some arrows in key areas after that. There were 15 controls on the course, and a 2 hour time limit. If you had less than 30 minutes left when you got to #12, you were to return to the start. 7-15 looked more straight forward than 1-6.
We started one by one. I knew I wanted to turn left at the first junction. So I did. Then I could see a water feature down the next right turn, just as I had highlighted on my map. Rode some more....but now the map and the
features did not jive. By this time I was comparing notes with another racer and clearly we were not where we thought we were. So we backtracked, went straight instead of heading towards the (wrong) water feature, and hit the park boundary which helped locate us on the map. Finally, victory! The first control! I probably had the worst split on that one. But def. got the most recon work done on the way to the first control LOL.
#2 was easy.....just follow the trail.....
#3 was on some one way single track, and since we had seen so much of the park on the way to #1, it wasn't hard to find the start of the single track section. So many leaves!
#4 also on some one way single track, and the way there was also a bit of a review (I said I saw a lot of the park on the way to #1!)
#5 we attacked with confidence, but why are those camping trailers visible from where we are? Clearly we are not in the right place. By this time we were realizing that we were overshooting everything. 1:10,000 scale on a bike goes by faster than we realized. So we backtracked, found the singletrack and the control.
#6....hey, we know what we're doing now! Back along the route we'd taken from 4 to 5, up past the sugar shanty, et voilĂ .
#7...we've got this! Bombed down the trail (which I noticed afterwards was one way, and we were going the right way), across the parking lot, maintenance road....and into some one way single track again.
#8....should we do more single track or bail out to the road? how often do I get to ride single track? Ride it! I got sucked into thinking we were at the end of the lake for #8, but it was too early. So there it was.....and time was running out. So we took some single track , and ended up at the trailer camping area. Again. I knew how to get back from here! But part of the trailer camping area was out of bounds, so we jumped on the single track we had inadvertedly explored while looking for #5, and went back to the start/finish.
So what the heck happened? That first left turn.....that was the right idea. Except I blew past it and turned left at the next trail junction and spent some time in a parallel and (and not so parallel) universe. If I could have that 20-30 minutes back, I would've spent it going to 9, 10 etc.
I was glad I went. I have never been to Albion Hills before, and the trails were great (and hilly enough for this flatlander). I can see how it would be much easier if you were familiar with the area. We were getting much better at route choices once we found 5. Another hour on the time allowance would've suited us just fine. But any time I can get some practice connecting the map/map scale to the geography is time well spent in my books.
And did I mention that it was a cool but wonderful day to be in the woods?
Mountain biking (Picking up controls) 28:30 [3] 4.9 km (10.3 kph)
I wanted to do some more riding, so coach ld and I went out to pick up 3 controls that I didn't get to. No navigating on my part, as coach ld knows the park and had been to these controls today (and at a fast enough pace to win Masters women!). Some humbling hills in that section, which is apparently a decent XC skiing area.
Some of the participants went out for pizza afterwards so I joined them for a hot drink. It was good to meet some Canadian AttackPointers.